Can't people on DU find forgiveness in their hearts?

Our President wants to put the robo-signing mess behind us. Why is that so controversial? Have we become so hardened that we cannot find a little forgiveness in our hearts?

Sure, these good folks committed perjury that wrecked many thousands of lives - but not once did they commit perjury about their own personal sex lives. And they sure as hell didn't smoke pot. Given these facts, I believe that they are not a danger to society. And I hope that you'll join me in cheering the end of the private Hells that these bankers have been living in.

1. Talk to some Homeless Folks about it

2. No, they are nasty people.

The other day I tried to collect money from the homeless for a charity to help the bankers - did you know that some bankers only have three homes? In any case, the homeless people wouldn't contribute. One actually yelled bad words at me.

4. What

Our President wants to put the robo-signing mess behind us. Why is that so controversial? Have we become so hardened that we cannot find a little forgiveness in our hearts?

<...>

Tomorrow is a new day. Let's forgive and forget.

...if this turns out like the Social Security announcement in the last SOTU?

What if we're surprised? Remember the CFPB:

The CFPB had already rolled out a public education campaign, “Know Before You Owe,” to improve financial literacy on the consumer side as well before Cordray officially took office last week. But Obama’s recess appointment unleashed the watchdog’s full enforcement authority. Over the past few days, the CFPB also launched its first known investigation into a financial firm, probing kickbacks that were allegedly paid to PHH Corp., a private mortgage lender.

21. How could he possibly announce cuts at the SOTU? He simply called for them

And he lied about Social Security needing to be "strengthened", another cute game by Obama, Pete Peterson, and that crowd. At least he didn't yet again repeat the lie that FDR didn't start Social Security for retirees.

26. Hmmm?

And he lied about Social Security needing to be "strengthened", another cute game by Obama, Pete Peterson, and that crowd. At least he didn't yet again repeat the lie that FDR didn't start Social Security for retirees.

85. In a post like this from Manny, how could anyone not get the sarcasm? Consider the source.

I vehemently disagree with Manny and sometimes I want to wring his neck, but I like him. He's persistent and believes what he's saying. Over and over. Never gives up. He makes me smile -- I can't help it.

16. Kay an Arrrgh! nt

19. I'm not sure that the progressive thing would be to penalize the 100s of thousands...

...of employees involved in the robosigning debacle just for following orders.

Though we shouldn't give the banks blanket immunity, we should make exceptions for the bosses who ordered the peons to do it, and places where it was systematic and where you can show evidence that the individuals involved knew it was wrong.

So, while your derisive sarcasm seems at least somewhat amusing, in reality it reflects a truly non-progressive value system, where hundreds of thousands of people are fined, penalized, or even criminalized for following orders, in many cases, probably ignorantly.

31. But didn't you accuse me of projecting a "truly non-progressive value system"?

32. Nope.

I said your derisive sarcasm "reflects a truly non-progressive value system." You may, in fact, not actually believe the sarcastic undertones which manifest themselves in your post. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by "find forgiveness in their hearts"?

33. I was being sarcastic.

For the record, here's what I believe:

1. Any attorney who robosigned, or ordered robosigning, should go to jail. They knowingly committed perjury.
2. The "Nuremberg rules" should be applied to anyone further down the food chain who robosigned: following orders should not mitigate conviction, but it can mitigate punishment.
3. Any company in which robosigning occurred should be fined.

35. So, you do hold the non-progressive values I ascribed to you.

Now that that's out of the way, you think we should fine and / or prosecute tens if not hundreds of thousands of people.

And people wonder why such inanities are taken seriously.

Full disclosure here, I am 100% against blanket immunity, as I believe higher tier individuals do not deserve immunity. But the low level mom and pop brokers most certainly deserve immunity, as they likely acted ignorantly if not coerced in a time when jobs were at risk. I don't buy the "Nuremberg rules" here because I partook in mortgage law in the past, it is some of the most convoluted stuff out there. I think people were just incapable of following the rules properly and ultimately pressured to do them.

36. They signed pretty straightforward affidavits, no?

37. Under the auspices of MERS-enabled proxy. The electronic nature of MERS...

...meant that many of the employees who signed these things were doing so ignorantly of the laws in states (which require the foreclosing agency to actually hold title, which MERS most certainly did not do). Other states, however, it's perfectly legal.

We need to grant immunity to all the peons, and then fix the system by going after the higher ups who intentionally exploited these loopholes. Meanwhile we need to standardize the mortgage system so that this sort of thing isn't possible in the future. Like the Uniform Commercial Code which covers pretty much all commercial business practices in a huge chunk of states. We need a Uniform Real Estate Code.

38. I thought they attested to false information

39. They're handling it state by state. The GOPers tried to legalize MERS' actions across the board...

...by making it so that all electronically filed mortgages handled by MERS were legitimate across interstate borders.

Obama denied them that, fortunately.

MERS is maintaining that what they did was legal, and playing the game of "it's the banks' fault." Well, yeah, it is, they should know better. But the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of peons who played along probably didn't.

62. It's "non-progressive" to want criminals in the banking industry punished for their crimes?

87. You'd let the mucky-mucks go free, Manny?

Not me! The executives who ordered the robosigning, approved it or condoned it within those companies would be at the top of my prosecution list! Though I'm with you -- the people who are doing the robosigning knew they were doing a bad thing when they did it, yet they went for the easy buck and went along, knowingly being a part of the illegal and evil system. That's based on the things that robosigners have said after-the-fact.

45. As a former banker...

we were told daily and unapologetically that we alone were legally and morally responsible for our conduct, even if following a direct order and that if we had any concern or qualms about an order to call "Compliance" at XXX-XXX-xxxx. Failing to do so, we were accepting civil and criminal responsibility for our actions. Note that "Compliance" is transparent to regulators.

Note that I am no longer a banker. I'm also fully in support of "(penalizing) the 100s of thousands of employees involved in the robosigning debacle just for following orders." Nobody reaches those levels in the bank or is allowed to do that job without the licenses, training and certifications to know what they should and should not be doing or signing.

I was only following orders has never been an acceptable defense in anything.

46. It is highly unconventional to expect peons to know other states' laws.

They have a defense on that alone. Each state has its own individual laws. MERS made it so that those peons were signing stuff that was legal in one state while illegal in another. It's likely that some people signed off on some things that were both illegal and legal in a single days time. It is highly wrong to blame those people for something that the bankers and their lawyers knew ahead of time was wrong. You spend 8 hours a day robosigning foreclosure notices, a chunk of them are legal, another chunk is illegal, and you're incapable of knowing which because you need to know the laws in all 50 states. No mortgage broker or proxy would know all of those laws. Each one has a credible defense against such things.

It is not progressive to go after those people after having been caught in a banker trap of illegalities. This is not a defense at the banker level as I have already expressed that they don't deserve those exceptions (they should have known better).

Let's just hope that while you were a banker you never used MERS because it's damn likely that at some point in time you were using it against the laws of a given state, and extradition can happen.

48. You are ignoring the assertion that those you call "peons" needed certifications for the job...

"Nobody reaches those levels in the bank or is allowed to do that job without the licenses, training and certifications to know what they should and should not be doing or signing. "

That doesn't sound like any of the definitions of "peon", either literal or metaphorical, that I've ever heard.

If the robosigners were all required to be licensed, trained & certified... then there is a legal expectation that they know what the fuck they're doing. If they decide, under duress or just for the sake of convenience, to circumvent the legal (not to mention ethical) expectations of their training and certification... then they ought to be held responsible.

If they ARE held responsible... then no trained & certified professionals will be inclined to side-step all of the ethical considerations of their training and certification process. If NOT, then they, like the Wall St. types, will be inclined to ignore ethical constraints that are "just for show" and paperwork.

It's kind of the same thing as the holding responsible of those who ordered torture... those who performed it (like those who enforced the evictions robo-signed) can be considered "peon"s in the sense that they're enforcing the rules in the "fields"/streets... but those who signed into effect those orders have to take responsibility, as certified competent signers-into-effect, for what they signed.

Let the banks train monkeys or guinea pigs to sign the signing statements if they're worried about what a signer might say under duress from the DOJ ("Row. Row. Row."), or if they want to be able to claim that no one is ultimately responsible for statements being signed...

50. That's now how it works, you're licensed in the state you work in.

States don't require you to know every other states laws to be able to be licensed in said state. There is absolutely no legal expectation that they know what they're doing in other states.

This is not clear cut like torture, states real estate law differs from state to state, there's no general idea of what real estate law means, particularly when it regards paperwork signed by proxy. Some states allow it, other states require deeds to be on record, etc. MERS has won several lawsuits in states where their behavior is allowed, and every robosigner responsible for it has got off scott free (and arguably did nothing illegal in that state).

You're advocating allowing some states with laws against some behavior, trump those states with laws for some behavior, which itself is highly non-progressive. At the bare minimum the people in charge are responsible for knowing whether or not a given state allows said behavior, and if those people in charge tell the peons to behave a certain way that goes against a state law, those people in charge need to be charged with crimes, not those who followed what they believe were normal.

Again, this is not like torture, torture has clearly defined lines. This is about workers doing something illegal in one state that is legal in another. You cannot expect me to believe those workers are "responsible" when their bosses likely knew the end results and compelled the workers to behave that way. It's bullshit, non-progressive, and puts the onus on the workers and not the managers with regards to legality. That's just totally wrong. These people did nothing inherently wrong except do what they were told so they could keep their jobs!

66. Agree ...it's like working for Al Capone as a book keeper and saying "I never killed anyone or ... "

67. So if you work for Al Capone as a book keeper you are not guilty of murder. Ok.

If you drive the get away car you are not guilty of what ever the others did. "I was just driving a car" ...and since when is ignorance an acceptable excuse in a court of law? I suppose all the US bomb makers are also not guilty of killing the innocent.

40. Would it be a "good fit" I stole a couple grand of your money and got off clean for $20?

49. Who's going to pay that $25 billion?

Fining the corporations will allow the individual banksters to avoid punishment. Instead of coming out of their scandalous bonuses, the fines will one way or another be passed on to us. We just fined ourselves $25 billion. Yay!

These guys need to be prosecuted personally and have civil suits against them personally to wrest away their ill gotten gains.

51. A 25 billion dollar penalty...

55. yep.

They factor in the cost if they should get caught breaking the law. It's always a win for them.
Insurance Companies have been doing this for decades.
This shows intent and it is time we actually prosecuted them since 'corporations are people too'.

76. I keep wondering how Martha Stewart feels about all this.

Remember how in reading her jail time sentence to her, her judge said that there had to be consequences for dishonest behavior regarding the stock market?

That judge made it sound like Martha had brought down the American economy.

Now w we have Bankers who DID bring down the American economy, and they will never see the inside of a jail cell. At least not as long as Corporate-enabling politicians are addicted to campaign monies.

89. For 1 trillion, you could buy the top 30 banks in the US

The largest bank. for instance, is worth $161 billion. Goldman Sachs is at $53 billion - that's the total value of their shares on the stock market.

I wonder if some of the problem people have with this is how quickly the sense of scale is lost when getting up into numbers that high, or whether the banks are mixed in with investment firms and hedge funds in people's understanding. They are quite separate, and the values given at the link are the actual market values of the complete companies.

52. du rec. nt

54. I can forgive, but I don't chose to forget.

In church they told me to turn the other cheek, my Mom told me that's right Baby, but you better damn well remember you only have one other cheek to turn, after that you let them have it with both barrels.

82. Sarcasm . . . how'd we get through life without it? k-r'd nt

83. Yeah I can forgive and forget!

As soon as these robo banks forget about my debt of which they jacked up the interest rate to try and bankrupt me. NO F'ing way. To not prosecute these greed mongers is to say that there are two standards in our society. One for the bankers and elites and another much harsher one for everybody else.